


Right Into Place

by TakeHomeJulie



Series: 3 Reasons Why We Were Built To Last [1]
Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: I Will Go Down With This Ship, M/M, be kind, i was so self-conscious about getting this up but here we go, meaning aaron's mother and the alexandria residents, my first ever aaric fic, slight homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-14
Updated: 2015-03-14
Packaged: 2018-03-17 19:18:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3540992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TakeHomeJulie/pseuds/TakeHomeJulie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eric met Aaron, Aaron met Eric and the world seemed to fit right into place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Right Into Place

It wasn’t a particularly sunny day when Aaron met Eric, plaid shirt clinging to him with summer sweat, half a bottle of water pressed against his cracked lips. He was between savoring the way the liquid soothed his sore throat and how cute the man approaching was to notice he’d pulled the bottle away from his mouth and the water was dripping down his front, leaving a dark patch down his shirt and drips running from his chin down his neck.

He stuttered over his words at first, trying to say hello but instead it came out sounding like a cat screeching. Eric laughed, which Aaron was partly thankful for, and it was getting the same smile from him the next day, and then the day after that, that really made the man blush, a bright red working its way onto this cheeks.

“You’re adorable,” Eric told him one day, a smile tugging at one corner of his mouth. He was trying to disguise his own blush, eyes glancing briefly up at the other man before peeking down. He seemed liked he wanted to say more but he didn’t and surprisingly, Aaron was okay with that.

The first time they kissed, after just a few short but seemingly longs days, it was as if it all came together. It was more of a needy kiss than one of passion, both just glad to see the other, not entirely expected to meet each-other halfway with their lips crushed. It had been all that Aaron wanted, something sweet and gentle but still filled with all the love that he could want and Eric was soft, probably afraid or scared but something in the way he was shaking said that he was definitely both. Definitely.

“I’m okay,” he whispered, voice almost lost to the wind. The other man heaved a sigh of relief, eyes closing against his skin, forehead against the fellow recruiter’s. “It’s alright.”

No one had really said anything, Jessie greeted them as normal the following morning, waving with a polite smile, a basket tucked under her arm, calling out her good morning’s to them as they clasped hands, not really willing just yet to let the other go. Maybe it was the sight of them happy together- two men, because who knew guys could be that into each other? - that really turned people away, made them turn their nose up at them, think of them in a different light. They’d become outcasts in a new society. Even in the midst of the apocalypse, not everyone accepted them; the two men who looked at each other like they hung the stars in the sky.

Perhaps it was when Aaron moved into Eric’s house that really turned them off, the two men lugging boxes of possessions through doorways, laughing and pressing soft kisses to the others jaw and sometimes stopping just enough to catch the others eyes. They spent a good part of the day moving stuff around, trying to make it suitable and just _theirs_.

‘You’ve got no taste,’ Aaron had joked, digging his heels into the ground as he pushed on the end of a couch, moving it across the floor with a screech.

‘I’m with you, aren’t I?’ the other man had retorted back, grinning as his boyfriend did all the work, almost non-existent muscles evident through his shirt, which was now riddled with sweat in the summer heat.

After that, they’d hammered some nails into the wall, playing around with a camera they’d found outside which didn’t take the best photos, but it was better than nothing. It made them feel like a real family, and one they were. The only thing that was missing was the respect of their peers. The wall adorned with ornaments and souvenirs from outside the walls, it took them two days to move all Aaron’s stuff into Eric’s house and the night after they’d finished, the first night they spent together, was something neither is very willing to forget.

They were nine houses apart and even though it didn’t seem like much, the distance felt like they were almost a whole world away from the other.

Their first night together, clumsy hands grasping his hipbone just a little too tight or his hand leaving soft scratches on his back, which he never meant to do, it was something so perfect that neither could see how they lived without the other before. Pressed together, soft laughter filling the silence between them, Eric giggled. Properly giggled, trying to apologise between breathless laughter that it wasn’t Aaron he was laughing at but at the expression on his face.

“We don’t have to do this if you don’t want,” Eric offered, a smirk crinkling at one corner of his mouth in support, because he cared. He had experience, something Aaron himself didn’t have. He was confident and sure and steady. “We can take it slowly.”

“I’m okay,” he whispered, more to himself than to his boyfriend. He wanted to be confident, wanted to be so sure that he wanted to do this- he wanted to be closer to Eric in all means possible. “I just—I’ve never really done this before.”

“I’ll show you.”

Twenty-six, no experience with _‘dancing in the sheets’_ \- as the song went- Aaron had felt nothing more spectacular than being with Eric, than whispering in his ear and making noises he wasn’t even sure before that that he’d been capable of. It was special, memorable, and even though it wasn’t perfect- wasn’t like they had candles or music or anything romantic of the sort- it was still perfect to him, in its own imperfect way.

Eric’s lips were warm, pressed hot again his own. What they lacked in harmonised co-ordination, they made up for in passion. Neither was too fussy, just happy being near the other, close, closer than Aaron can remember ever being to someone. One hand was gripping the bone around Eric’s hip, urging his leg up. This is it, that’s what he told himself, he’s going to do it.

When his parents found out he was gay, or more like his mother sat him down and asked ‘Aaron, baby, why don’t you have a girlfriend?’ which was a simple enough question, it just about brought his whole world down upon him. He’d barely considered it, told himself he wasn’t gay, he wasn’t, that he just hadn’t found the right girl to be interested in because he thought that was true. He knew he was gay, somewhere deep down inside him screamed at every boy he saw, but he didn’t want to be. There was too much danger, not with the slurs that got passed around.

‘Gay’ wasn’t exactly a friendly word.

Fifteen and banned from the locker room at school for apparently checking out Jake Anderson, he had no choice but to tell his parents, to spend as much time far away from them as possible, avoid their talk about how they couldn’t have a gay son, that’d they would somehow heal him. Spoonfuls of applesauce chocked down, his mother's desperate hope that it would make his straight because she couldn't have a gay son, she whispered, she couldn't not have grandchildren.

He never did find someone before Eric, not ever, but when he met him, he knew.

Eric’s shirt was tucked into his pants but had somehow come untucked; one part of it hanging down, and his hair was tousled, eyes glistening when he noticed the spilt water down Aaron’s front, offering him another shirt with a small smile curled in the corner of his mouth. It was when he was digging through his drawers, rattling off questions and speaking in what seemed like a foreign tongue because Aaron was too occupied by the small bit of skin that was peeking out on the other man’s back, shirt riding up. He was going to move and grab it, pull it back down but it was too distracting and he didn’t have that kind of level of self-control to deny himself the pleasure of seeing Eric’s bare back.

It was the most he’d seen of another guy since he was seventeen, at a pool party, staring at Luke Miller- who was eighteen and totally not gay, about as straight as they come- as he was tugging his shorts down his thighs, revealing milky white beneath and small freckles that layered the skin beneath. Aaron tried not to stare, not even when he pulled his shirt off, muscles underneath. He figured maybe Luke swam, as fit as he was, but the pale skin seemed to disagree.

 _‘He bikes,’_ his friend Tommy told him, mouth full of bread and barbecued meat, a drink of something alcoholic in his hand that he wasn’t allowed anyway. _‘Wants to be an athlete. His dad wants him to be a mechanic though, said no son of his will ride no bike.’_

_‘How do you know that?’_

_‘He told me,’_ Tom replied, rolling his eyes. His tone indicated that of course the answer was obvious, that Aaron should’ve known that, he wasn’t stupid. _‘Besides, one of his friends- they’re in the closet- thinks you’re cute. I said I’d introduce you guys.’_

The world ended soon after that, a few days before his twenty-first, beer pressed coolly into his hand, one sip and he was gone, not appreciating the way it burned his throat or how his voice grew raspy after one too many sips. The bottle was quickly discarded in a rose bush, that friend of Luke Miller never came to see him, not after Luke beat him after finding out he was gay, and he never saw Tommy again, not after he disappeared into a room with a small brunette called Lucy, and his parents weren’t home when he made it there, eyes watering and head pounding.

He packed his stuff, sat on his bed for a while, staring out the window, trying to ignore the sound of growling below. It happened so fast, the end of the world. Looking as storm clouds rolled in, as the army came through town, left starving survivors in the street, police ran over harmless citizens, it was something he’d never thought he’d ever see and he hoped to never see it again.

Finding Alexandria was a Godsend, something he had only dreamed of in the days at the beginning of the end of the world. He was used to hostile people, to being denied the decencies of a human heart, and his job as a recruiter was perfect. Eric, however, was the biggest gift of all.

A growing boy, more beautiful than any of the kids he had spent his teenage years admiring, who looked at him like he was the most beautiful thing, choking on the water in his mouth and trying to croak out a _‘hello’_ because by gosh, that guy standing in front of him was gorgeous and Lord be damned if he wasn’t utterly star struck by him.

 _‘I’m Eric,’_ he’d introduced, offering a hand in Aaron’s direction, trying to supress the grin on his face. He would later admit that he had first assumed Aaron was straight, that he didn’t swing that way and even after they made the decision to eat dinner together one night, and spent a good majority of the time used for eating to instead play footsies under the table, he still questioned his now-boyfriend’s sexuality.

Maybe he was insecure, maybe not wanting to throw himself at someone straight.

“So, you’re gay?” Eric asked, smirking subtly towards him one night. “Like, gay?”

“I’m gay,” he replied. He sometimes says that it was the kiss that took him to realise how much he liked the other male but it was the many times before that, when he first saw him, water dripping down his face, choking on the liquid in his mouth or the other time, when he told a hideous joke and the man grinned widely like it was possibly one of the best thing’s he’d ever heard.

Aaron had gotten it from the packaging of a feminine hygiene product but his boyfriend didn’t need to know that.


End file.
